New York Times on Young Guns

How to encapsulate the difference between FutureOfCapitalism.com and the New York Times? We've got different missions and different resources, but here is one example. When three members of the House of Representatives, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, and Kevin McCarthy, wrote a book called Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders, FutureOfCapitalism.com published a 1,200-word review that appeared on the book's publication date. How has the Times handled the book? It has waddled in with a review more than five weeks after the book came out, whose treatment of the book, in its entirety, is as follows:

Nor is there much evidence that Republicans were ever able to conceptualize the serious problems with the nation's medical system, let alone undertake to reform it on their own terms. "Democrats and Republicans agree that our health care system is broken in fundamental ways," Eric Cantor notes in YOUNG GUNS: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders (Threshold, $15), a campaign book he has written with Paul Ryan and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California. Well, great. But for years now, Republicans discussing the availability and cost of health care have been like a kid who, when asked why he hasn't cleaned up his room, replies, "I was just about to!"

It's a four sentence book review that manages to be just about 100% wrong. The two major efforts to address the availability and cost of health care in the past decade (before ObamaCare), the RomneyCare universal coverage plan in Massachusetts and the Medicare Part D program that President Bush signed into law to help pay for prescription drugs for the elderly, were both Republican initiatives. One can find fault with both of these programs, and many have, but to fault Republicans for not acting on health care cost and access seems to ignore these two developments.